View source for Logs:Deals with Devils

{{ Log
| chars = [[Percy]] and [[Lilith]] as ST
| summary = Percy meets Tillo, and they have a pleasant chat.
| gamedate = 2022.05.12
| gamedatename = 
| subtitle = 
| categories = Vampire
| log = 
Over the past several nights Percy has been diligently working with his contacts among those that uphold and understand The Accord to gain a meeting with Tillo, Prince of Darkness. It's all a formality, really, all he'd really need to do is tell the nearest rat or pigeon that he needs a meeting and Tillo would hear of it. Instead, the Daeva 'follows procedure'.


It's not too hard to get an audience with the Undercity Prince. Notice of intent sent out, it's just the next night when a message comes through that an escort to the underground lair of the Elder Crone will be arranged and arrive at one in the morning, behind the Pulse.

The figure waiting is average in height, shrouded in layers of concealing, dark fabric, and proves to be a woman. It's impossible to make out the shape of the body under the cloth.


Percy De Clare is absent of his usual flighty affability. He's wearing a simple dark-coloured pinstripe suit in three pieces, along with a matching dark homburg. "Good evening," says he once he's made his way silently out the back entrance, the noise of the club thrumming behind him that fades with the closing of the door. With him are two young women, dressed somewhat immodestly but all their bits and pieces covered, he gestures to each after a moment, "A gift. I trust this will not be a problem."


The woman studies the pair, then inclines her head, "I am certain they will be appreciated. It is a bit of a walk, though." she warns before turning to begin the trip down into the Undercity.

Percy's shoes may not be the same, and the trip is made longer by an effort made to avoid the worst of the muck and mud in the wetter tunnels. Still, it is likely to be unpleasant with all the expected mustiness and gross sliminess one expects of the Undercity.

Eventually they arrive at a heavy door with a naval style aquatic seal. This is opened and the woman gestures within.

The Oubliette smells of dried blood.


Following along without complaint, Percy and the two women trudge their way through the muck and the... everything to get to their destination. Once the door is opened and his entrance permitted, the Daeva removes his hand and taking a small number of bills from it as he reaches out to shake the escorting woman's hand, "A pleasure." For clarity, he's absolutely trying to tip her with a wad of hundreds concealed in his outstretched hand.


The shrouded woman bows her head slightly, declining the cash with a mild motion of her - neither offended or flattered by the offering. "That has little meaning, here." she whispers, motioning the two woman to follow her - presumably to nearby chamber or cell that is down an unseen tunnel. 

Within the cistern-become-Oubliette there is not much. Where the shadows are thicker, the throne rests, forged from twisted old rebar, burned timbers, and mildewed human bones. A large, old scythe rests against the back of it, and the monster himself is in a posture of thoughtfulness. Unmoving, unblushed. Not bothering the feign the small motions of life that many cling to. Not even blinking.

Against the wall across from him rests a simple drying wrack of bound branches with a stretched, human skin on it, drying. The skin of covered in twisting gnarls of fire scarring - enough that features on the face have been twisted and nearly the whole body marked by flames.


For once, Percy hadn't bothered to adopt the blush either. He slides the money away, no fuss no muss, and simply enters the indicated room - assuming that someone or something will get the door once he's passed through. Managing to do a quick scan of the room, if he's disturbed by anything featured here he doesn't show it - but given his long history, seeing things that are best left unseen, and the occasional guest spot at the weekly Crone orgy, it's not surprising.

Clutching his hat in both hands in front of him, Percy steps forward towards the throne; stopping short at what he would say is a reasonable distance though he doesn't know the owner's personal tastes on the matter. He offers a bow from the waist, forty-five degrees or so, but remains silent. Only speak when spoken to, after all.


Percy is made to wait until the shrouded woman with the odd gait closes the door. It's shut gently, but the door is weighty, and the chamber such that the change in air pressure is very much felt.

Only then does Tillo move, rising to his seven foot height. "It has been a while. The rats whisper of your success." He speaks slowly, with an old mannerism that dates back to the simple black suit, cut in the style he's worn for over a century. As he rises, the aura of famine radiates off of him. A man with hunger so great he could devour the world and still remain gaunt and voracious for more.

"What brings you to the shadows?"


A thin smile manages to reach Percy's visage, "If only others listened to them so carefully." His eyes carefully track Tillo's slow, methodical movements even as the memories of starvation and loss wash over him with the Crone's radiating aura. "Given your need of me and my kind has shrunk, I presume your success is also among those whispers." A pause. "As always."

"You already know why I've been sent," Percy says with a small frown, though strangely comfortable in the darkness of the sewer, even here in the demesne of one so... wrong. So alien. And yet so... beautiful, in a way.

"As usual, your actions and inactions are of concern to those reigning where the moon casts its light." Reigning, not ruling. One is a figurehead, the other... Percy seems to know who actually rules and where. "I appreciate that if you wanted them to know, they would. But they seek to understand, and so sent me." A pause. "Along with a Sanctified Priest. Though I elected not to inform him of our meeting."


"Mmm." Less a hum and more a lower, bestial sound from deeper in the throat. The Crone's Beast fiercely strong and coiled just beneath that thin facade of what once was human.

"You should have brought the priest. All bark, no... *bite*." The last word clipped, upper lip drawing back to flash the tip of over-large fangs.

"Prince Salvatore. Always sniffing around for weakness. He'll find none here. But you know that."


"For my own sake," Percy says with another small shrug, "I felt it best not to add to your headaches. To... make up for my taking up your time I have brought you two specimens from my own herd. A token, naturally, but still." He falls silent for several moments as he thinks, hard, on what to say. "Even if there were weaknesses to find, I doubt I'd be able to see them even if you pointed at them."

"Still," he continues, doing his best to push Tillo's bestial aura from his mind, "What is of concern to your realm *should* be of concern to all. It isn't, of course, far too keen on infighting. But ripples have been noticed, and Salvatore is... concerned." A pause. "Obviously, his whims and fancies aren't of import to you. But I shall admit, when he mentioned that moves were being made, I became concerned as well. When small moves happen down here, it's usually for a reason. and that reason is almost always bad for those of us eking out an existence above ground." Beat. Two beats. "Am I right to be worried, Prince Protz?"


Silence, stillness greets Percy, at first. The answer is to beckon the Daeva as the Crone moves towards the stretched and drying hide on the frame. The scythe left to rest, but no sense of a *need* for the weapon.

"We have known one another for a long time. And longer still has the Undercity been in my care. Even before the fire and the rot that formed the verge." He does not move with mammalian grace, but with that of a spider - calculating, precise, with no motion wasted. Unhurried.

"You know well, too, the balance between the Kindred, the Lost, and the Wolves that joined the Accord. And within that, the constant shift of power among those that have, and those that do not." The Princes, of course.


Percy, in spite of all appearances outside of this very sheltered room, is not an idiot. When he is bidden by the giant of a man-spider, he follows; and he does his best to avoid having his thick-soled boots click-clack on the ground as he follows behind the... technically younger but immeasurably more powerful Nosferatu, "To say anyone truly knows you, Prince Protz, would be an overestimation on their part. You are the mystery of all mysteries, the secret of all secrets." He peers at the drying skin with a curiosity unbecoming an Invictus elder, but it's so rare to see an old technique so expertly done in modern nights. Percy himself very likely engaged in such activities in his living years.

"You know the shift of power has long-since lost its lustre to me," Percy says with an infinitesimally small frown on his lips, "Children vie for power under the expectation they can hold it." He pauses to cast a glance towards the Nosferatu, "You and I know that power comes with... baggage." He speaks, presumably, of the Verge. "They will fight their little fights, have their little kingdoms, all the while the Undercity will be left defending the world from unknown horrors and threats, with you standing as the lone bulwark against oblivion." A pause. "As usual."


"Is the Undercity falls; the city will fall. We are symbiotic in ways none but those down here can understand. Those that have seen and fought what the verge sends to us."

"And you will know, too, that Kindred are not always the best solution for the task." A motion towards the skin. "and so, we use the tools we have at hand. For the Greater Good of the city." He has grown with the city. Risen in it's fall with the fire. Rising with the birth of the Wound. among the three, he stands tallest, but it is a precarious footing that hinges on the verge and containing the foul things that slink across.

"The dogs dislike my use of their enemy. One has made a deal to come and see if he and his can replace them in service to me."

"This has already complicated things with Fire-Touched pack." One long, skeletal fingers drags along the hide.

"They should not trouble me any longer with their nonsense."


"If the sun explodes," Percy says slowly, "Earth will have eight minutes before it finds out. The shockwave and the light from the explosion will come at the same speed." He shrugs his shoulders, "The same should the undercity fall. We above will only know when the monsters, the darkness, reach us. And by then it will be too late." Percy peers closer to the skin as if trying to determine who it was before it was a thing instead of a person.

Listening intently to the facts as Tillo presents them, the dashing Daeva furrows his brow slightly, "I should have expected that the power plays and appeals to authority don't stop once you reach the living. Even in the face of the reality we find ourselves in." He reaches up to rub his face, the firelight showing the craters and lines of war-hardened features that almost indicate his true age. "Naturally Salvatore cares more about his position than your needs, he doesn't appear to see that a threat to this place is a threat to everyone. He is often as short-sighted and foolish as the imbecile of a priest he dispatched with me."

There's a long pause. "What do you need?"


Male. Average size. Nearly the entire body burned. A few smudges of tattoos, rendered unknowable. The face a melted-wax mess, even before the skinning.

"He is hungry for that long denied him. But is not prepared for the responsibility. The *burden* of our position here." Tillo says, a faint growl creeping into his voice. He doesn't give two shits about the power plays - he never has.

He does, however, use any tool he can to do the job - Forsaken or Anshenga. For whatever reason, setting himself as the bastion to defend the city.

"There is nothing to end the conflict between the Pure and the forsaken. Their feud is millennia old and nothing is going to mend that rift."

"I need leverage to get the werewolves to work for me, without howling their fool heads off and taking the credit for the Protectorate." Or the throne slips, and things grow more precarious. The math, simple as it is, is unpleasant. And the evidence of how he 'politics' is stretched on the drying frame.


"All rifts can be healed," Percy says with a shrug, "When the other side is all dead. But I'm assuming that's going a touch too far." He frowns deeply, it almost looks like a snarl on his altogether lean features, "I shall have to cultivate new contacts among their ranks. They have a nasty habit of being mortal and dying off at the most inconvenient moments." He waves a hand slowly, "Let them howl. So long as the important people know who holds their leash, that will suffice for the moment."

Straightening and turning to look at the Nosferatu once more, Percy's brow is down in a furrowed pit, "I simply cannot allow the undercity to fall. The fact we have a... civil working relationship is a bonus. If keeping you on your throne keeps the doom of the world at bay? I'll do whatever has to be done to keep you there." He almost smiles. It's threatening the corners of his lips, but it's not quite there. "Frequent invitations to the Circle's gatherings also prove an engaging time. So I shall wrangle the wolves, and ensure their... continued cooperation. Their desires be damned while this festering problem remains."


Unblinking, dead eyes turn to regard Percy, then he inclines his head. "it is good to have an old friend that understands the gravity of the problem." One hand reaches into his suit coat, producing a weighty looking, but small, pouch of worn velvet. Real velvet - not that cheap crap one finds these days.

"Let my coffers fund your efforts. Two for yourself, eight to ease the path. Come to me when you have information and need more."


"Loyalty is all but dead," Percy says as he deftly accepts the pouch, stashing it away sight unseen, "I'm glad to see that the undercity still understands it." There's a long pause before Percy offers another bow, "I appreciate that your time is precious, and so I shall not take up any more of it. You know where to find me, if you have further need of me." Another pause. "If that Priest... Marius is his name... should find himself down here. I doubt anyone would notice if he didn't come back." He shrugs. "Food for thought." With that, he backs away from the throne towards the exit.


"I will have the Fetcher keep an eye out for him. And the next Sabbat is the Summer Solstice. Your presence will be welcomed." The invitation tugging the edges of his mouth in the faintest of smiles before he inclines his head and starts back towards the throne. To study his new trophy and contemplate ways to save his city from the city has done to itself.

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